C’è dell’ananas nel vino? Descrizioni enologiche tra parassitaggio e modulazione pragmatica

Abstract

In this paper we will analyze the semiotic-cognitive status of the descriptors of wines commonly used to assert that a certain wine has a hint of fruit. We will show how this relationship between the wine lexicon and the fruit lexicon is based on a process of dependence and is not a generic phenomenon of linguistic borrowing. It is a parasitic process that transforms the fruit lexicon from an asystematic lexicon with a denotative function - for which the term "pineapple" we mean to refer to pineapples in the world - into a Saussurian-type system capable of giving shape to the experience taste and capture the differences between the scents of the wines with adequate granularity. We will argue that this transformation is made possible by pragmatic-lexical modulation processes that we will investigate through the theoretical tools of Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1995). Finally, we will show how discussions on wine constitute and structure the taste experience itself, allowing us to understand, describe and identify different types of wine.